Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It was a horror story—a man planning for the future of his grown Children before losing his life to cancer, only to have the $400,000 in his IRA go to his wife of two months, who cut the children out the wishes of his will. Leonard Smith had thought it would be a straight-forward transaction. After he died in 2008, it was a full year before his children had realized that they had been ruled ineligible to receive his retirement funds, and Smith’s wife – who, by default, got all of it – had no intention of giving it to them.